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Comment by oh_sigh | Hacker News Reader

Consider this alternate reality: It is exactly like our timeline, but alternate reality US does not intern it's Japanese citizens during WWII. Some of those Japanese citizens went on to commit mass murders against civilians. Other than that, the timeline is the same as possible (US wins, etc).

Would you still feel the revulsion against internment camps as we do in this timeline?

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Of course. White supremacists, sovereign citizen folks, and the like commit the majority of terrorist acts in the united states, but I don't call for putting them in concentration camps.

Plus the timeline is implausible. The Office of Naval Intelligence had declared that the Japanese American population was not a threat to national security. The solicitor general, Charles Fahy suppressed that information. If he hadn't died thirty some years before the federal government admitted wrong doing, he would hopefully be facing serious charges and expect to die in prison.

I am unaware of an example of concentration camps that was an issue of security instead of racism.

Wrong is wrong. Silly hypotheticals don't change basic ethics.

Not a plausible alternate reality. The UK had draconian detention regulations in WWII (Defence Regulation 18B allowed the detention of citizens without habeas corpus) but even we were weren't daft enough to use it on the entire German-descended citizen population - mainly just our homegrown fascists (and never more than 1000, I think).

No mass murders. Obviously.

Chances of that happening is probably less than chances of school shootings.

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